Education inequality in China exists on multiple levels, with significant disparities occurring along gender, geographical, and ethnic divides. More specifically, disparities exist in the distribution of educational resources nationwide, as well as the availability of education on levels, ranging from basic to higher education.
History after 1945
Shortly after the Chinese Revolution of 1949, the Communist government was confronted with heavy educational disparities across the nation. In the years following the Chinese Revolution, the Chinese government attempted to address these disparities with alternating approaches, creating periods of differing emphasis on opposing educational models. The first model, based on egalitarianism, emphasizes equality across regions of varying economic wealth and development. Conversely, the second model, based on competition, emphasizes individualistic competition, rationalizing any existing educational disparities as a necessary sacrifice for national economic development.
The Chinese government also focused educational policies on higher education and specialized training, leaving basic education underdeveloped throughout large parts of the country. Government funding for education was reserved for urban areas; rural communities, already at an economic disadvantage, were left to fund their own schools, exacerbating the already existing divide between urban and rural education. When collectivization policies passed in 1955, placing rural families into agricultural cooperatives that distributed income on the basis of labor hours, the importance of education dropped even further within these rural communities, and they were much less likely to fund primary education for the children of their communities.
Also beginning in the 1950s, the hukou system assigned the Chinese population into urban and rural regions, exacerbating continuously worsening inequalities within health, employment, housing, and education. Further complicating education policy, people of rural-hukou status are able to live and work in urban areas without changing their hukou designation. According to Xiaogang Wu's tabulation, based on figures from the 2000 Chinese Census, an estimated 33% of city residents were actually designated as rural-hukou holders.
A significant shift in education finance policy occurred in 1982 with the introduction of decentralization, in which provincial governments were now individually in control of financing education within their region. The change in policy sought to capitalize on rapid income growth by funding education from non-governmental sources, and in the 1980s and 1990s, the government share of education expenditures dropped, even as total education expenditures increased. As a result, families had to pay increased tuition and fees, and schools turned to surcharges and social contributions to fund themselves. Education for children of poorer families was only attainable with state subsidies, which often did not reach the families who were most in need. Tuition and fees also increase as students move from lower to higher grade levels, so even if these poorer students were able to move through the education system, many were prevented from even completing their compulsory education by economic barriers. Additionally, this shift to a wider financial base for education also coincided with rising interprovincial inequality, significantly impairing education opportunities for children in poorly developed rural provinces.
Although basic education policies remain in control of the Communist Party, increased open-mindedness shown by party authorities indicates the possibility of more substantial educational reform, in addition to recent reforms to the national college entrance examination. Although educational inequality has lessened overall, great gaps in educational attainment still exist between populations on multiple divides, affirming the need for a regional focus within reform initiatives.
Gender stratification
Although recent studies have shown reductions in gender inequality within Chinese education since the 1980s, disparities still remain across different regions of China. Studies have indicated that education in rural areas of China shows significantly greater gender disparity than education in urban areas. Since 1981, the rural illiteracy rate of females has consistently been over twice that of males, despite an overall decrease in illiteracy in rural regions.